


Attack of the Cranky Baby

by celli



Series: Babysitting'verse [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, BYOSubtext, Chromatic Character, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-05
Updated: 2003-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex goes it solo. Set not long after Misadventures in Babysitting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attack of the Cranky Baby

A quiet suburban home. A tricycle on the side of the driveway, begonias lining the sidewalk.

Lex eyed it as if it contained a meteor mutant.

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Once, twice, three times. He could almost hear a voice saying _suck it up, Mayor Luthor._

"Oh, shut up, Clark," he said. He slammed out of the Lexus and headed for the front door. "This is all your fault anyway. If you hadn't saved my life when we were kids, I couldn't have been guilted into babysitting tonight."

"Lex!" Lana had the door open before he could knock. She beamed at him.

"You look lovely tonight, Lana." Lex allowed her to enfold him in a hug. She smelled like baby powder and the Chanel he'd given her for her anniversary. "How's the restaurant?"

"It's great. My new night manager is doing such a good job, I've been able to turn all my attention to the new catering menu. We're up thirty percent this month."

"Lana," Pete said from the hallway. "You said no business tonight. That means you too."

"Oops." Lana pressed her lips together, her eyes twinkling. "Busted."

Lex and Pete rarely bothered with small talk; as Mayor and Chief of Staff, they talked enough--occasionally too much--every day. They just nodded at each other.

Pete stood obediently still while Lana straightened his tie, brushed off his jacket, and more or less groomed him. He snuck in a kiss while she fussed with his collar, and Lex had to smile. The Rosses were probably two of the--not happiest. Two of the most _content_ people he knew. He tuned back in to their conversation. Even if they were quasi-bickering over Pete's taste in dress shirts.

Lex had to agree with Lana on this one. That was an ugly damn shirt.

"They're both settled in," Lana said. "P.J. is asleep, and Laura's fighting it, but she'll be out any second."

"Yex!" they heard from a distance. "Yeeeeeeex!"

"I'd better say hello before she works herself up." Lex moved quickly to Laura's door. She was leaning against the child-gate blocking her way, arms out as far as she could reach. "Hello, Laura."

"Yex! Watch Monsters."

"No," Lana said sternly from behind Lex, causing both him and Laura to jump. "You give Lex a kiss goodnight and crawl into bed."

Laura pouted. Lana stared.

"Okaaaaay." She held her hands up again, and Lex leaned over to hug her. She kissed the back of his head noisily. "A'night, Lex."

"Good night, Laura."

"Thanks again for doing this," Lana said as Lex climbed to his feet.

"Anything for my favorite Chief of Staff," he said, and they could hear Pete laughing from the living room. He started to walk back there, but Lana's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Lex? Why _are_ you doing this?"

He looked away from her into Laura's room, strewn with the usual two-year-old debris of books, crayons, and stuffed animals.

"Maybe Clark's rubbing off on me," he said, and something in his tone must have warned Lana, because she dropped her hand.

"Well, we appreciate it," she said, and smiled at him.

Pete and Lana finally left. Lex breathed a sigh of relief and settled onto the couch. He'd brought along a book to read--a rare personal indulgence, reading for pleasure--and was deep into _Fellowship of the Ring_ when a thin wail interrupted Elrond's Council.

P.J. was soaking wet. Further investigation showed that his bottle had worked its way loose. "Poor baby. You're a little young to be using milk as a skin treatment," Lex said to him, keeping his voice quiet. Laura was just one room over, and the last thing he needed was her well-meaning "help." He got P.J. out of his pajamas with only minimal fuss ("If they unfasten at the bottom, why do they even _have_ buttons anywhere else? It's false advertising."), but then he couldn't put him back down. The crib was wet.

Lana and Pete's bed looked safe enough. Lex overcame his immense squeamishness and entered the room, pointedly not looking at the lingerie on a chair in the corner. Who knew Lana fancied black satin?

He set P.J. in the exact center of the bed and draped a blanket over him. "Okay, go back to sleep."

P.J. looked up at him.

Lex winced.

P.J. screamed.

***

P.J. didn't want to be on his back. He didn't want to be on his front. He emphatically didn't want to be in his walker; Lex's ears were still ringing from that one. He didn't want to be on the couch, or on the floor, or in the automated rocking swinging thing.

"It's not that I mind," Lex told him on his four or five hundredth walk down the hall, switching him from his left side to his right. "It's just that you still don't seem happy. Mind you, I'm glad you're not screaming."

P.J. looked up at him. Eyes that expressive on a baby not even a year old had to be some kind of strange meteor mutation. "I'm sorry," Lex said. "I'm just not very interesting."

P.J. just kept _looking._

"Are you sure you don't want formula?"

P.J. emphatically did not want formula. He rejected it so vocally, Lex started to wonder if he'd made it wrong. He read the side of the container again. Two scoops of formula, four ounces of water, how hard could that be? "Should they be heaping instead?" he asked the baby. "Don't look at me like that. I can do this. It can't be any harder than chemistry lab in college."

He rinsed the bottle out and started over, struggling to balance P.J. and measure the formula at the same time. A sudden movement threw him off balance, and he looked over to see P.J. reaching for something.

"You want saltines? Oh. Well." He couldn't think of any reason they'd be bad. "All right."

***

P.J. made a loud, vowellike sound. Without looking up from his book, Lex put another cracker down on the edge of the walker. He leaned back in the chair and checked his watch; he needed to make sure P.J. was cleaned up before Pete and Lana got home. They'd laugh maniacally if they knew this was the only way he could deal with a baby. He was a bit smug about it, privately; a cracker or a check, a bribe was a bribe. Even if ninety percent of this bribe was on P.J.'s face and the floor beneath him.

"Even you have a price, Peter Junior," he said, and smirked.

He didn't even see the cracker coming.

"Sh--ow!" he said, and rubbed his cheek. "What did you do that for?"

He offered the cracker again. It came flying back at him, followed by a little car, a stuffed tiger, and a purple plastic thing that squeaked.

"What is that, a whale?" Lex said, distracted. "No, no, wait, P.J. Don't--"

P.J. screamed.

"Whoa!" Lex snatched him out of the walker and held him close. "Okay, okay. No more crackers. I promise."

The screaming cut off with surprising abruptness. One little hand reached up and patted Lex's cheek. He didn't even notice the wet crumbs transferring to his face.

P.J. was _smiling_ at him.

"Oh," he said in sudden understanding. "You just wanted some attention, huh?"

He could have sworn P.J. nodded.

***

Lana looked down the hall. "Lex, how did--" She stopped when he put a finger to his lips.

"Come here," he whispered.

She tiptoed down the hall to where he was leaning against P.J.'s doorframe. He pointed inside, and she listened.

"Blah blah habla va woom blah fwoom."

"He's been doing this for twenty minutes," Lex whispered.

Lana put a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.

"I think he's rehashing the plot of the book."

"You read to him?"

"I thought he might like the hobbit bits."

"You read _Lord of the Rings_ to him?"

"A few pages." Lex grinned at her. "He liked it."

"I'm sure he did."

Lex's smile fell away. "Lana? Your par--" He stopped.

"Yes?"

His words tumbled over each other. "How did you know you'd be a good mother?"

"I didn't."

He blinked at her.

"I used to..." She looked down at her hands. "When I was pregnant with Laura, I had recurring nightmares about leaving her behind at the grocery store, or dropping her out of a window, or forgetting to feed her for days at a time."

"But once she was born, you were fine."

"They were worse with P.J." She fiddled with her wedding ring, turning it so the engraving on the band caught the light. "I second-guess myself every day. Should I work less, or more? Buy fresher vegetables, cloth diapers? How much TV is okay? What books are more educational? How many times did I hug them and tell them I love them? And I had good role models. Aunt Nell was a very good mom. I didn't give her enough credit when I was a kid."

"Kids never do."

"I know. I look forward to the day when Laura hates my guts." She didn't look up. "I always wished I'd spent more time with babies before I had one of my own. I did my share of babysitting, like every other teenage girl, but I had the Talon, and then college, and then Pete. I might have been a little more confident if I'd practiced my parenting skills beforehand, you know?"

"Think so?"

She looked up. "I do. You know, Laura likes the zoo."

He was fighting a smile. "You don't say."

She nodded.

***

Pete turned to his wife as soon as the door closed behind Lex. "What did you two talk about?"

"Nothing. He's taking Laura to the zoo next weekend."

"Maybe that explains it. He looked a little shell-shocked."

She grinned. "Pete, I'm going to make you a bet."

His eyes lit up. "Oh, really?"

"I'll bet you that Lex Luthor is either a father or has a baby on the way within a year."

"Are you out of your _mind_?"

"Does that mean you're not betting me?"

"No. Oh, no. You are absolutely on. Sucker."


End file.
